This was written for the 30 Days of Fright challenge (hosted by Wendy Cockcroft). Prompt 27: shedding my skin.
Partners
Ever since he killed his last partner, or, more accurately, refused aid and allowed him to die, Reggie Mulholand had been suffering from a queer feeling that sometimes wormed its way through his chest or coiled in his throat or his belly. A more self-aware man would have called it guilt.
Reggie was not so self-aware, but he made up for it with awareness of the world. He’d been to nearly every continent. Faced yetis in the Himalayas, tracked elusive unicorns through the remotest forests of Europe, had a few nasty run-ins with harpies in the Mediterranean. All with his old partner Randy.
Reggie and Randy. Through thick and thin and equal partners to boot.
Until that day the rope started to give way, frayed when it shouldn’t have—he’d checked the equipment—and Reggie had let Randy fall, fall, fall into the mist. Rather than be dragged down with him.
Self-preservation was a natural instinct, he told himself. Nothing to be ashamed of. It made him strong, even. A man has to do what he has to do; make hard choices. But in the night, no matter where he might be camped, Randy’s scream came back to him, hollow and mournful on the air.
He didn’t tell any of this to his new partner. “What woke you up?” said Hank, poking a stick at the dying embers of their campfire in the middle of the night.
“Bad dream, I reckon,” he said, a sick feeling of falling through the air still fresh in his mind. He shifted his head on his arm and closed his eyes again.
He’d met up with Hank in a tavern in the last big town, a hunter himself, though of a different nature. Hank hunted your standard treasure—ancient artifacts, gold objects, rare items that could be sold to the highest bidder. Reggie hunted something infinitely more intangible, but Hank didn’t need to know about that. They’d struck a bargain over warm, musky beers and now here they were, encased in the jungle on a humid June night, still feeling each other out, learning how far they could trust one another.
So far, so good.
****
Reggie and Randy had only ever gotten in one real fight about their work. Oh, more than one about women, surely, but those weren’t real fights, not philosophical, not important.
They’d been hours traipsing through branches and vines and leaves bigger than their heads, dripping with moisture. Reggie had twisted his ankle on a fallen log miles back—a rookie mistake—and to make it worse, it felt like they had gone in circles. Hadn’t they seen that boulder before?
“You sure you don’t wanna take a rest, get off that ankle for a while?”
“It’s fine. We didn’t come all this damn way to rest.” Reggie felt surly and vulnerable. And he was ready to kill that yob who’d sold them this bogus map to the cave.
The Cave of the Feathered Serpents.
He was glad he’d used his harpy claw to surreptitiously steal the man’s tobacco. Randy wouldn’t have approved.
“Well, I need to take a load off,” Randy said, dropping his rucksack and settling himself on a fallen log. “So you’ll have to do the same.”
They set up camp, sat within their narrow ring of firelight as the forest grew even darker with the fall of night.
The humid air was full of the music of the forest and the two men’s quiet, amiable talk, when Reggie hopped up, pulling his knife from its sheath in a well-practiced motion. “Look at that!”
It was a small white snake, slithering near Randy’s feet.
Reggie lunged, but Randy stayed his hand. The snake cowered beneath Randy’s log, coiling in on itself. “What’s your problem?” Reggie grumbled. “All we’ve had is bread for days. That snake’s good eatin’.”
Randy shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.” It was a white snake—albino maybe, and Randy was superstitious. He was also more kind-hearted than Reggie.
“Dammit, man, what’s got into you?” Reggie was full of bile and frustration and disappointment—more feelings he probably couldn’t name if he tried. “We came all this damn way to kill a snake an’ if we can’t find the feathered serpents, then at least I can have one lousy snake to show for it.” He shoved Randy, who had also stood.
The eyes of the hiding snake glittered in the firelight.
Randy pulled his knife.
It needn’t be said that both men had been drinking.
The two eyed each other, swaying like cobras, ready to strike, but not really intending to. Just warning. Seeing who would back down.
The white snake coiled itself around Randy’s ankle, like it knew he was its protector. He leaned down and held out his hand. The small snake sidled into it, wrapping around his wrist.
“Jesus H. Christ. You gotta be kidding.”
But Randy was in awe. “I think he likes me.”
The little white snake sparkled in the firelight and its scales seemed to shift. It slid up Randy’s arm, its forked tongue flicking in and out, licking him on the chin, the temple, the ear.
Then, to both men’s surprise, the serpent unfolded a set of tiny wings and flew off into the dark forest.
“Damn it!” Reggie yelled. “It was one of them!” He tried to follow, but Randy blocked him. The snake was long gone into the night.
Reggie sat down in disgust and anger, putting his knife away.
Randy’s eyes glittered in the firelight like the snake’s.
****
In Reggie’s mind, they had missed their one chance that night. Feast on the flesh of a feathered serpent, and gain the ability to shed your skin, in a manner of speaking. Change yourself. Look and talk like someone else. Maybe be someone else.
By morning his ankle was swollen right good, and there was little choice but to turn back. Reggie sulked. Randy was wisely quiet.
That was a year ago. Now Reggie woke to a revived campfire, in the same retched jungle, here to finish what they’d started. Hank was already making coffee. Randy used to do that. Just another reminder.
“Sleep well?” Hank handed him the metal cup as he sat up. “Careful. ‘S hot.”
Reggie sat up and took the cup in two hands. The jungle was hot and humid already, alive with sounds. Too hot for coffee, but he sipped it gratefully anyway.
“So what’s the plan today?” Hank looked at him over his own cup. “We gonna find this cave of yours?”
Reggie nodded. “Damn straight.” There was fire in his eyes.
Hank tilted his head. “Why you so hell-bent on this cave of the serpents, or whatever it’s called?”
Reggie reached into his sack for some unicorn jerky. He’d need the stamina. Chewed off the end before he answered. “Unfinished business. Me and my old partner—he couldn’t bring himself to say Randy’s name out loud—we tried to do this job together, but we had to turn back. And now he’s dead.”
Hank let out an “Aahhh,” as if something made sense. “That’s why you ain’t so interested in the treasure. You’re doing this as some sort of memorial, huh? Some sort of justice maybe?”
Reggie took a deep breath. Let it out. That uncomfortable feeling wormed its way around in his chest. He tried to ignore it like he had for over a year. “Yeah.” He polished off his coffee. “Something like that.”
****
This time he didn’t use some yokel’s fake map. This time, he fell back on his tracking skills, wished he had Randy’s famous intuition, too.
If you knew where to look, there were low stone markers in this jungle, left by some ancient civilization, rounded, covered in moss, carved with simple symbols now almost unreadable. Once they’d found one, it led them to the next and the next, and if it didn’t lead them easily, they poked around, hacking at underbrush until one of them, almost always Hank, found it. The man was definitely an asset.
So they had progressed, dripping sweat, swatting insects. Until they found the shed skin. It shimmered in the sun, thin like paper—no, thinner, practically translucent—crisscrossed with the pattern of scales. And here and there, a white feather or two lay on the ground next to it.
“What the hell’s this then?”
“I told you,” Reggie said, “it’s called the Cave of the Feathered Serpents. For a reason. We must be close. Just have your weapon ready.” Reggie’s machete gleamed in the flashes of filtered sunlight piercing the canopy. For a moment, he saw his reflection in the blade, his face mirrored in pieces, fragments.
Soon, he would be able to change into someone else. He hoped that meant he could also forget.
The cacophony of forest sounds was overlaid with a long, slow, hissing that Reggie might have noticed had he been a more perceptive man.
“You ready?”
When Hank didn’t answer, Reggie turned around to find himself alone. Hank was gone. Like the forest had swallowed him into its dark belly. “Hank?”
He took two steps back and that’s when he saw it. Hank hadn’t disappeared. A papery, dry, husk of Hank lay crumpled on the ground. No blood. Like the man had just divested himself of a Hank-shaped skin suit.
The coil in Reggie’s chest slithered and turned cold.
He looked around in all directions. The forest was still and quiet.
Much too quiet.
He made to back up further, hyperaware now of his surroundings. The palm fronds moved. He gripped his machete tightly. The brush parted and something revealed itself.
Someone.
Randy.
It couldn’t be. It was a trick.
Reggie saw now, behind the thing he believed was not Randy, the dark mouth of a cave, hidden among the foliage, as if it had just appeared, or he was finally able to see it.
Reggie stuttered. He stammered. Randy waited with glittering eyes. “Stay back! I know you’re not… him. He’s dead.”
Randy swayed on his feet, ever so slightly, a rhythmic motion, intentional. He was pale, as if he’d been living out of the sun for much too long. “Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong, partner. I didn’t die. I transformed.” He smiled, but there was no mirth in it. “Thanks to them.”
A white serpent, feathered scales white against the darkness, rose up behind Randy, wings folded along its sinuous body. Its forked tongue licked him gently on the ear. Familiarly. Randy ran his too-pale hand along the snake’s side. “Brother, you remember Reggie…”
Reggie tried to back away further, to turn and run, but the forest was dense around him, crowding him in, and he was sure he saw sinuous flashes of white amid the trees.
Randy’s face flickered, shifted, and for a moment he looked like Hank. Then his skin became feathered scales. And when he spoke again, his tongue was forked and his words were underlaid with a hiss. “When I fell—when you let me fall—I never hit the bottom.” Wings unfurled from his back, like some Medieval avenging angel. “I flew.”
Reggie fell to his knees, machete forgotten by his side. The fight had gone from him. He couldn’t kill Randy twice.
“Please,” he gasped. He thought about the Randy he’d known, who’d showed mercy even to a little white snake. “Please…. I’m sorry.”
When the fangs pierced Reggie’s throat and the toxins coursed through him, he didn’t feel the sharp pain or the blood trickle down his neck. His vision misted, and he felt the terror of his body falling through space. Falling and falling. And something finally uncoiled in his chest. And he kept on falling.
Further Reading
In case you missed them, here are some of my recent posts for the 30 Days of Fright writing challenge.
A Victim's Dictionary
Another experimental flash fiction piece, written in the form of dictionary entries, to the prompt: frightening fungus.
The Mourning Bell
I'm very fond of this gothic story about a mother and daughter whose time is limited.
This is the Shrouded Grouse, and here you’ll find supernatural short stories and novellas, essays and musings, zines, and illustrations that explore the liminal spaces and moody places.
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This story is a twisty as the snake. Great job!